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Friday, November 28, 2003

Wow. I'm in total amazement. Telus Webmail finally got a spam filter. After a few days of paranoia that I'd lose something important if I set it to automatically delete spam, I bit the bullet and set it to do just that. Now, the 100 spam messages I used to get daily have been whittled down to 3.

Did you ever decide to do the right thing but later regret it because it meant making more work for yourself? See, in my Internet computer course that I have to take, it continuously pissed me off that the tests always included material that wasn't covered in the course. Finally, I complained to the instructor about it. He said, "OK, smart guy. Here's the last two tests. Point out the questions that aren't covered in the course and I'll forward it to the folks who run the online courses." Took me a good chunck of my Friday afternoon, but after careful analysis, I determined that 1/3 of each test wasn't covered in the course material. Let's see if this changes things.

And when that was done, I had to go to the Nest, NAIT's on-campus bar. Another group in my class was doing their promotion. They chose to do a variation on Speaker's Corner. Rant on camera, best one gets shown on TV, and you win a prize. Because it was Friday afternoon, they were afraid they wouldn't get anyone. So, they asked me to come down and do a rant. I think I'll take that as a compliment.

"Mark, we need a colourful person for this project. Can we just turn the camera on you and let you be yourself?"

Speaking of compliments, I've also got to point out an instructor's comment on an assignment I just got back. The task was to watch a news story, transcribe it, and then analyze if it was a good story or a bad story. Thing is, they haven't taught us anything about news yet. If I had to draw an analogy, I think it was the pre-activity for when they teach us news next semester. But I digress.

This assignment was angst-ridden for me. The original news story I wanted to transcribe was eaten by my VCR, so I had to come up with a second choice the night before it was due. Wanting my angst to count for something, I turned in both my complete second choice and my half-complete first choice. The mark my instructor wrote on the cover was "A++++." The comment? "I can hardly wait to get you into the newsroom next semester. You GET this."